OOT.
But still. Give them education? Who chooses to? And when the trend is to make higher education more and more expensive and inaccessible to the lower and middle classes? When the people who decide what is taught are the ones with the most interests in lowering standards? To claim that problems in democracies can always be solved by pacific means and that problems in dictatorships can only be solved in a leader's death is a false dichotomy. Disregarding the fact that what sets one aside from the other is usually pretty arbitrary, dictators have passed down power without dying and democratically-elected leaders have used their armies against their own citizen.
I do wish for a society where everyone is better educated and officials fully accountable. Sadly, all you need to do is follow the opinion polls, the political news, and follow election campaigns and it's pretty clear that marketing has long replaced political science and philosophy and that most peoples votes will remain the same no matter what.
Who chooses to? Nobody. Education is free and mandatory to all people. (at least until... 16 y.o.?) and then, it's only free (or almost free) to all people who wants get higher education. Of course you can try to destroy the people education... if you do it, the democracy will be destroyed in a few years.
??? How many democracies you know that solve government problems by violent means? (Hey! I don't like this law!... who did it?... not matter, kill him!) and dictators... well, they don't accept the criticism very well, usually they solve the criticism killing the critic.
And yes, dictators have passed down power without dying... and nothing has been solved. Still a dictatorship.
"democratically-elected leaders have used their armies against their own citizen"... A democratically-elected leader don't make a democracy. As I said, in a democracy ALL powers are controlled by others powers. If a leader can control the army, and can order it to attack his own people... then this is not a democracy. Of course, they can call themselves as they want. Many dictatorships call themselves democracies.
The last part... Yes, sadly, in this you are right. We must know no democracy is perfect, and no democracy is invulnerable. We must see the imperfections and must try to make it right... because, not matter the country, there will be some 'powers' who will want to use this imperfections to control the democracy, to destroy it, and only leave a controlled, void pantomime... or a dictatorship. And usually the first step to destroy a democracy is to put the people against it.
Honestly, I'm not very optimistic about the occidental democracies. Maybe we are living the begin of the end. If some things don't change (and fast), in 25-50 years probably they will be all void pantomimes... or worse.
